Ese headed to the closet in her room to pull out her clothes for the new day. She was just about to open it when a pile of papers caught her attention, pulled out on Melida's desk. She had obviously stayed up late studying again. It was none of her business, but Ese's curiosity got the better of her. She went to the desk and looked through the papers. Most of them were trying exams in various subjects. Ese noticed among them the results of the science test. The one she had scored eighty-seven percent on. Lower than usual, which Alienora didn't mind reminding her. Ese was curious about Mel's score. Even though she wasn't top of her class, Mellida was smart.
Flipping through the test sheets stapled together, Ese wondered why they still used test paper at the academy. Not only was it old-fashioned, but paper was hard to come by nowadays. Even in daylight, since most monsters didn't come out then, going into a wooded area was a big risk - it was most monsters' natural habitats. But why was she surprised, the people at the academy were a bit eccentric after all, she should have learned by now. Ese flipped to the last page and looked at the score. Thirty-four percent. She read it a few times to be sure, but it remained the same. Ese looked over at the sleeping Melida and sighed. Why hadn't she told her? She was failing - Ese could help. She reminded herself to talk to Mel about it later. In the meantime, she looked at the watch on her wrist. Her first class was five minutes away. Five minutes? Ese gave up opening her closet and looking for new clothes - she slipped a sweatshirt over her wrinkled t-shirt and didn't even bother changing out of the pants she'd slept in. She could afford to look bad today, couldn't afford to be late.

For the first time in history class, Ese opened her textbook. Mr. Gardner was absent, probably busy with his role on the school board. They had been meeting frequently since the disappearances began. Their Monstrology teacher-yes, the name was very original-had been filling in for him. After realizing they had never read the textbook, Miss Sung sighed, and had them read the first lesson. Ese wasn't surprised to see that it was about the beginning of The Hundred Years War. Ese already knew the basics. Most historians agreed on what happened in the beginning. Monsters had always lived among us, despite our ignorance of their existence. They were hidden far away in the dense forests, or in the depths of caves, and posed little danger to mankind. Secret societies of sorcerers, of whose existence men then also had no suspicion, kept them in order. In the thirties of the twenty-first century, however, something changed. The monsters didn't want to live in peace anymore, and began to leave their habitats and approach the cities. Thus began the age-old war. Predictably, when the monsters began to invade, everything began to fall apart. First the general panic- no one had ever seen such creatures before- some giants, others no bigger than your hand, monsters whose entire body was just thick slime, and ones that seemed to be made of steel, creatures with thousands of eyes, thousands of mouths, or hundreds of legs.
No one could blame humans then for the chaos their society had fallen into. No one was prepared for something like this. As she remembered the story, Ese thought about how much the beginning of the war resembled their current situation. Although everyone in the academy knew of the existence of monsters, most of them, unlike Ese, had grown up in protected sectors and had rarely truly encountered a monster. The people here weren't ready for a new invasion. Ese hurriedly banished those thoughts from her mind. They were safe here- the protective field kept them safe. Monsters couldn't be responsible for disappearances. But what other explanation was there?
Ese snapped out of her thoughts and focused on her textbook. She skipped the first few paragraphs and got to the part where what really happened wasn't certain. That was the point in the story that was most argued about. Ese began to read, a slight excitement raging in her stomach. She'd heard different versions of the events following the centurie-old war many times, but it always gave her chills, imagining how much worse it must have been than the current state of the world. And it wasn't rosy at all.
After the government collapsed, an eighty-year period of disorder followed. All the countries organized their armies and spent years in unsuccessful efforts fighting to remove the monsters. In the first decade, however, all the armies were defeated, and the world was officially taken over by the monsters. Then began what many historians call the Dark Years of the Twenty-First Century.
Ese was not surprised by the vagueness of the text. After all, no one had much precise evidence. Most of what was in their history books was educated guesswork at best. Ese was just beginning to read the following paragraph- it was probably going to talk about a group of wizards who sacrificed themselves to banish the monsters in the night with the most powerful spell performed by mankind, thus restoring some order to the world(their existence was completely speculative and without almost any evidence, but it was written about in almost every textbook- people loved stories about heroes). The bell, however, interrupted Ese.
It was lunch time, and she decided she would go up to her room to look for Melida. She still needed to talk to her about her test she had found that morning.
When she reached the front of her room, Ese found the door ajar. She knew Melida wouldn't have left it like that had she gone out. Ese braced herself for an unpleasant conversation in which her roommate would lecture her about how it's rude to go through other people's belongings without permission. Even as she pushed open the door, however, she knew something was wrong. The closet was the first thing she saw. Its wings were ripped from the hinges. Cold shivers swept through Ese. She prepared to execute an incantation against whoever, or whatever, had done this. But when the door opened a little more, Ese saw a body. A body lying motionless on the ground in a pool of blood. It took her a few seconds to realize what she was seeing. Melida.